


Ghosts of the Jedi Past

by LCWells



Series: Star Wars [9]
Category: Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Jedi Temple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 17:51:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6668431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LCWells/pseuds/LCWells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke Skywalker comes to Coruscant to explore the now-deceased Emperor's tower and finds grim evidence of the Purge of the Jedi 20 years before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts of the Jedi Past

**Author's Note:**

> First published in Millennium #2 in 2004

Coruscant glittered.

Luke Skywalker had never seen anything like the capital city of the Empire – no, now the New Republic -- in his life. The multi-leveled city rose through the atmosphere almost to the edge of space, and he couldn't even imagine what it would be like down on the deepest level. What had the planet looked like before it was terraformed into the glittering seat of the Galactic Republic? Had there been green hills or sand dunes? Oceans or just dried seabeds? Who had created Coruscant?

The Alliance shuttle gently landed on a designated platform, its X-winged escorts landing close by. Luke knew that an Alliance-controlled Star Destroyer hovered protectively above. Funny; half the Alliance hierarchy had fought against sending their recent acquisition to escort their delegates to Coruscant. Didn’t the Alliance trust the newly reformed Republican Senate to keep their word regarding the delegate’s safety?

The other half had rudely asserted that they didn't trust the remaining former Imperial bureaucracy at all, and sending Alliance leader Mon Montha and her staff was reason enough to include the battleship among other vessels. Princess Leia stayed behind with the Alliance in case something happened to the delegates, and she was left in command. No one argued with Luke when he said he had to go. He'd found that only a few people argued with a Jedi Knight – that's why he cherished those who did. 

The government on Coruscant had yielded gracefully and provided a landing port near to the Senate chambers, and designated elegant rooms for all the delegates in a nearby sky tower. An Alliance security team had arrived early to make sure all was well. 

Luke had another goal -- the Emperor’s tower. According to reliable Alliance information, no one had entered the Emperor's massive headquarters since his death in the skies over Endor. Who would want to? The man, if he was a man at all, and Luke doubted it, had built the highest of Coruscant’s towers, and sheathed it in black metal. The few lights that shone at random intervals were red. Reports said that the lights had gone out when the Emperor died, leaving only a black needle in the sky. 

The delegates, dressed in long trailing robes, swished onto the platform, leaving Luke behind. After a while, he walked out to a waiting speeder, procured by security, and the pilot saluted him as he settled into the back seat. The speeder soared into the traffic. 

It didn’t take long before the driver landed on an empty platform on the black tower. "Shall I wait, sir?" he asked in pedantically correct grammar and Luke realized that he – it -- was a 'droid. No living being had wanted to fly to the building.

"Yes," Luke said confidently. "I'll be coming back soon."

“Yes, sir.”

He walked to the tall doors and waved his hand. Nothing happened. He stretched out further with the Force and felt the lock give way as the machinery acknowledged an adept. Creaking as if they needed oil, the doors slid open. Beyond them was total darkness. 

For a second, he was uncertain about what to do next. Anything could be in there. Finally, he pulled out his lightsaber, activated it and stepped inside. 

Lights went up -- red lights that grated on his senses, annoying him like the fine sand that used to burn his cheeks during storms on Tatooine. Flicking off the lightsaber, but holding it ready, he walked up the corridor. On either side, he saw shut doors. 

He hated this tower – it reeked of the Sith who had killed so many of the Jedi: a leader who had twisted the galaxy until it became a reflection of the evil in all the universe; a being who had twisted his father into a creature with only a fragment of humanity left. 

And yet – Luke slowed down as he reached a crossroads. From somewhere in the building, something was calling him, something that did not reek of Sith. Was someone still alive here who hadn’t been consumed by the Emperor? Luke turned in a full circle, reaching out with the Force, trying to understand what he felt.

It eluded him. 

Turning back, he saw an open elevator. Luke stepped into the elevator and felt the platform under his feet hum. It lifted. 

The platform rose until it reached an upper level, and the doors opened onto a vast room. 

Walking out, he saw tall solid metal walls were randomly punctured with dark circular windows. A red light hung above each hole, randomly turning on and off, giving an unsettling feeling to anyone in the room, and probably the area outside. The Emperor’s tower was glowing red again 

Following the elusive summoning beacon, he turned to the smaller elevator in one corner of the room. Something told him that only the Emperor, Darth Vader and the Imperial guards, had ever used it. Other living beings, even the Emperor's minions stayed here.

The stench of Sith was stronger in here and he almost gagged as he felt the presence of the Emperor. His lightsaber suddenly glowed in his hand, and Luke realized that he had activated it without thinking. He switched it off. 

The elevator opened on a small room that was probably the top of the tower. The octagonal room had four solid walls split with four arched windows. The walls canted inward to make the point of the building. The room was cold, but not dark. Panels, set at waist level, ran around the room, their lights flashing. Reports were still coming into the Emperor’s databanks. Luke made a mental note to discuss with Mon Mothma what to do with all the information. One more endless detail for the New Republic to deal with in the coming days, months, years.

He walked to the opposite side of the room and looked out the window. Amazed at the view, he stared down at the latticework of light and shadow. The city spread as far as he could see. The entire planet is a city. I never thought I’d ever come here

Looking up, he could see the stars and a large blob he knew was the Alliance destroyer. Below, thin clouds hid the city so it glowed like a furnace but had no details.

In the center of the room was the Emperor's wide chair, with a worn seat, so much like the one the Emperor had had in the second Death Star above Endor. Here, the Sith lord had ruled the galaxy, the Senate, his Empire.

Set in one of the walls was a screen for information. A holo display sat beneath it. All of the other walls were decorated with what looked like tubes. 

Circling around, Luke realized the tubes were the Emperor's trophies, a Sith's delight, a final triumph over his enemies. 

Lightsabers -- Jedi lightsabers taken from their dead hands and brought back to decorate his walls. The Emperor had kept his enemies close to gloat over their defeat. Luke wondered who had built the lightsabers. Was there someone who could tell him the stories of each one? Had the Emperor kept some kind of records? He rehung his own saber at his waist. They were beautiful; works of art in some cases, decorated with etchings or coolly functional, all metal and glass. The Jedi had come from every part of the galaxy; the lightsabers showed thousands of different cultures. 

Hesitant, he stepped closer to the wall, and put his living hand on the grip of one of the lightsabers, feeling cool metal, rubber and glass. Sliding his fingers under the saber, he tugged on it and, surprisingly, it came loose from the wall. 

"Who created you?" he murmured. "A master? You must have been built by one to feel like this. Who made you?"

He found the activation switch. The lightsaber came to life, the blade glowing purple. 

His Jedi senses went off. With one smooth movement, Luke deflected the bolt of energy from a red-caped, masked guard who had appeared out of the darkness behind the throne. 

The guardsman fired the force pike again. Luke retreated a step, blocking the energy. His senses reached out and bounced off the man. No matter how he tried he couldn’t feel anyone, or thing, under the mask. 

This is getting me nowhere, Luke thought, blocking another bolt. I need to get out of here. He felt another presence – more guards. It was time for him to leave. 

He sliced at the force pike, taking off the tip, and as the guard reared back, he gave one slice underneath, then another further up, in a movement that Luke had never used but suddenly knew, and the guardsman collapsed. Luke leapt over the body and back into the elevator that had brought him up to the Emperor’s chamber. 

The doors slid shut, and the elevator headed down. 

Luke sighed in relief, and flipped off the switch. Turning the saber over his hands, he wondered if the original owner had just helped him – Luke had never done anything like that before. 

It took him a few seconds to realize something was very wrong. The elevator sank further than he remembered, falling farther and farther down until it felt like it was the planet level – or underground. Finally, it stopped and the doors opened. 

He stepped on the threshold, and activated the purple blade. The light flooded a chaotic scene. 

Mangled metal, twisted and warped. A sculptured face loomed up in one corner; most of the bronzium melted. Rows of shelves were bent over into circles, and fragments of scattered holobooks were embedded in the melted floor. 

Behind Luke, the elevator lights dimmed. He raised a hand, extended the Force to jam the controls so the platform wouldn’t lift, and felt a shock go all the way through him, like a fire along his nerves. The elevator was alive somehow? Luke felt a touch of Palpatine’s control – the elevator was a droid constructed for the Emperor and controlled only by him. The contact made Luke feel sick. He staggered forward onto the dirt, and fell on a knee, feeling dizzy. He felt a sharp pain but ignored it as he heard a voice say, “Tut!”

“What was that? Who are you? Who’s there?” Luke called, knowing he was not alone in the darkness. 

A tracery of blue rose from the ground until it outlined the figure of an older woman; her hair tied back in a bun and held by two hair-rods. The blue glow flowed until she looked almost solid. She lit her surroundings, which no longer appeared to be the solidified molten wreckage of a building. Her light almost made the room look intact, and endlessly long. “What do you want, Master Jedi?” she asked quietly. “What are you looking for?”

“Who are you?”

She spread her hands. “I was Jocasta Nu, the Archives Director, of course. I’m here to help you. How can I help you?”

Luke waved around. “What was – where am I?’

“Don’t you know?” she questioned. 

“No.”

“The Temple,” she replied, folding her arms. “I expect that you were trained in one of the lesser facilities and so might not know your way here, but I expect your master might have told you something of the Temple. After all, this is where the High Council met for thousands of years.”

“My masters taught me... I’ve learned a lot on my own,” Luke said defensively, feeling slightly stung by her tart tone. “This was the Temple? I thought it was the Emperor’s tower.”

“Psh!” she reproved. “That politician only destroyed the buildings. I was there, you know. One of his troopers took my saber out of the destruction, and put it with the others. It was one of the first to be mounted upstairs.”

“Are you all here –“ Luke asked feeling his hair rising. He hadn’t felt this way about Obi-wan or Yoda, or even his father, but this place was more frightening. “-- Ghosts – spirits of all the Jedi upstairs?”

“Oh, no,” she assured him with a forgiving smile. “Not even everyone who died in the attacks. My work isn’t finished or I would have gone as well.”

“Your ‘work’?”

She looked around, folding her arms as if she saw a mess to be cleaned up and only she could do it. “This library isn’t lost, young Jedi. You need to come here and find it. Your Sith only destroyed what he could. He needed to keep this knowledge lost; so he built his citadel here. You’ll have to dig deep, but you can learn a lot in the tower.”

“I have to get back up there,” Luke said ruefully. “If the elevator will go up again.”

She smiled. “Be careful with that lightsaber, young man. It served its master well in many dangerous situations.”

He looked down at the weapon. “Who did it belong to?”

“Why, Master Windu, of course. He was the finest teacher of fighting in many generations. He fell in the Purge, as did most of us. You’ll have a fine time searching out our stories. Even your Sith kept records, you know. Now, chose, and go back upstairs.”

He realized what his knee had landed on was pair of blocks. One was a cube, the other a pyramid. “What are they?”

“Which one do you want?” she countered. “Chose wisely.”

His hand hovered over the cube, then the pyramid, and then back… and then picked up the pyramid. “What is this?”

“I’m sure you will find out, young man.”

“But be careful with it,” ordered a commanding voice next to him. 

Luke swiveled and the lightsaber came close to bisecting an imposing dark-skinned man in Jedi robes. Instead of blue, his robes were edged with purple; the same color as the lightsaber in Luke’s hands. Dimly through him, Luke could see a melted statue of a Jedi. 

The archivist bowed her head. “Master Windu.”

“You were…are… Master Windu?” Luke repeated hesitantly. The man looked as tall as Chewbacca. Even dead, his ghost had a presence that could intimidate anyone. 

Windu moved over to stand beside the archivist. His boots left no marks in the ash. He waved to the pyramid but his gaze didn’t leave Luke’s face. “We’ve protected that until you arrived. The Sith wanted it back.”

Luke looked at the pyramid. “It’s from the Sith, isn’t it? What was the other? A Jedi – “

“Holochron,” she supplied. “A history of the Jedi – a basic text but you might learn something from it.” 

He turned the pyramid over in his hand. It felt familiar; no, it was the same feeling that he’d had upstairs, and that he felt on the bridge of the second Death Star. He could hear voices rising from it – Palpatine on that bridge, whispering to him, tempting him – trying to lure him to do something that would turn him to the dark side. “I need this more than that. To stop the Sith, I have to understand more —“ 

“Know the enemy, young Skywalker. But don’t listen to them. Come back later when you want more,” Windu commanded. “Now, it’s time for you to leave.”

Suddenly Luke was in the Tower room again, standing in front of the wall with Windu’s slot. The room was empty of any life; the Guard was gone. In one hand he held a glowing lightsaber and the windows shone purple with its reflection; in the other hand, he held a pyramid that whispered.

_Was that a dream? No, I have the pyramid. But, how did I get back here?_

He deactivated the lightsaber and replaced it into the wall holder. He’d come back – soon - and take down all the sabers, give them a proper burial if he could find out what that actually meant. Maybe he should use them as training sabers; or give them to the Alliance’s technicians to see how they should be built. 

He looked at the pyramid. A Sith holochron. He’d have to keep it safe from everyone. 

Reaching the closed doors of the elevators, he found the body of the Guard he’d killed, a sodden heap of red robes and gooey mess. So, that much had been real. 

The doors slid open and he retreated, pulling his lightsaber from his belt, held defensively, as three Guardsmen glided out to circle the throne, ignoring him and the body. 

Cautiously, Luke moved into the elevator leaving behind the tableau. The doors shut and the elevator sank back to the larger room.. 

The lights were still red. With a frown, Luke waved his hand and the colors began to shift. Yellow, white; then, blue and green. Purple. “Yes, that’s right,” he said aloud. “The colors of the Jedi.”

He walked out of the building, changing lights as he went. The corridor doors slid open as he approached and he saw they were full of ‘droids and equipment which he knew he’d have to come back and deal with personally. No one else would enter this tower. 

_Either I or the other Jedi will have to clean this place out. They have to be out there. I’ll find them. We’ll destroy this place down to the foundations, and cleanse it, and then…rebuild? Maybe. The world will have to be remade._

Stepping out onto the platform he saw his driver was still waiting patiently for him. The doors of the Emperor’s tower slid shut. 

He got in the rear of the speeder, cradling the pyramid in his jacket. “Platform thirty-four.”

“Yes, sir.” Looking up at the tower, he saw the colors of the lights were as he left them; blue, green, purple and some that almost seemed yellow. The pinnacle was dark. He wondered if the guards were still awaiting their dead master. _Were there other Sith out there to take the Emperor’s place or did they consider that he’d be the replacement?_

That would never happen. He pulled out the pyramid and turned it over in his fingers. He could hear whispers from inside -- insinuating, confiding and dangerous. Luke looked forward to exploring its secrets. 

There was a lot to be done.


End file.
